U.S. Department of Defense Honors Jeffery Barth, PhD

Neuropsychologist honored for treating soldiers with traumatic brain
injuries Dr. Jeffrey Barth For helping treat active-duty soldiers with
traumatic brain injuries and serving as a consultant on concussions to
the U.S. Department of Defense, University of Virginia Health System
neuropsychologist Jeffrey Barth, PhD, has earned a statewide honor.

Barth, director of UVA Health System’s Brain Injury and Sports
Concussion Institute, recently received the 2013 “Toggle” award from
the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services. The
award is named for the “Doonesbury” comic strip character Leo “Toggle”
DeLuca, who suffered brain injury during his Army service in Iraq.

“The Toggle award was designed to recognize individuals who are
responding to the needs of our everyday wounded warriors” said Virginia
Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services Commissioner Jim
Rothrock. “Jeff Barth’s one-on-one work, as well as his research, in
helping some of our veterans reacclimatize following injury is truly
noteworthy.”

Barth, who performed pioneering research on sports concussions
during the 1980s, became a Department of Defense consultant
approximately 10 years ago as the military sought guidance on how to
identify and treat soldiers suffering concussions and other forms of
traumatic brain injury (TBI) from improvised explosive devices in
Iraq.

Barth is part of a group of clinicians who have worked with the
Department of Defense to develop concussion management guidelines.
Barth’s work with the Department of Defense led to a job as the primary
neuropsychology consultant for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury
Center in Charlottesville. At the center – closed by the Department of
Defense earlier this year – Barth was part of a team of therapists and
clinicians that worked directly with active-duty soldiers who had
suffered TBI. “Many of these soldiers had significant cognitive
deficits based on multiple concussions. About 80 percent of them also
had post-traumatic stress disorder,” Barth said.

The residential program combined intensive therapy with efforts to
re-acclimate soldiers to everyday routines, for instance by having
patients visit restaurants and the movie theater on Charlottesville’s
Downtown Mall. For some patients, Barth said, “just being downtown was
a major accomplishment.” What Barth enjoyed most about his work at the
brain injury center was seeing how the program was able to help
soldiers recover. “We got to see them go back to normal lives, back to
their families, and in many cases go back to their military units,” he
said.

In addition to his work with the military, Barth is a member of the
NFL Players Association Concussion Committee and works with the
American Academy of Neurology on concussion management guidelines.